EFL Cup final: Aston Villa v Manchester City, odds, form stats & prediction

EFL Cup final: Aston Villa v Manchester City

Where to watch

Sky Sports Football & Main Event, 4.30pm Sunday

Match odds

18-1 Aston Villa, 1-6 Manchester City, 15-2 draw

Form

Manchester City arrive at Wembley for the EFL Cup final bouncing after Wednesday's win at Champions League kings Real Madrid in Europe's premier club competition and they are rightly considered red-hot favourites given there is a 32-point gap between the sides in the Premier League.

Aston Villa have not been able to use their cup run as a springboard for Premier League success, losing all three of their February top-flight fixtures, and Dean Smith was scathing of his side following a woeful performance in last week's 2-0 defeat at Southampton.

Villa had one shot on target to Southampton's nine and the final shot count was 28-4 in favour of Saints. They also allowed 23 shots and ten on target the previous week in the 3-2 defeat at Spurs.

Alarmingly for Smith, Villa have been on the wrong end of the expected-goals count in 17 of their last 18 Premier League matches, including each of the last 14. The one exception was a 2-0 home success against Newcastle in November.

Team news

Aymeric Laporte is unlikely to feature after the injury-hit centre-back suffered another problem in City's 2-1 Bernabeu beating of Madrid. Leroy Sane is training but lacks match fitness.

Tom Heaton, John McGinn, Wesley and Keinan Davis remain sidelined and Anwar El Ghazi is rated a major doubt.

The tactical battle

The sides met at Villa Park in January and it was a massacre. City ran out 6-1 winners after Pep Guardiola took the unusual step of selecting both of his strikers, Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus.

Only three times this season have City used the duo from the start (against Southampton in an earlier round of the EFL Cup and the recent 2-0 league win over West Ham) and it certainly worked wonders against Villa with Aguero bagging a hat-trick, while Jesus was also on the scoresheet.

Villa were totally overwhelmed, conceding 71 per cent possession and allowing 12 shots on target, while their only response was a last-gasp El Ghazi penalty to scupper City win-to-nil backers.

If Villa are to upset the odds they are going to need something huge from their midfield captain Jack Grealish, who has shone individually for his boyhood club and was called one of the best players in the league by Guardiola.

Verdict

Manchester City hit Watford for six in the FA Cup final and this has the potential to get similarly messy for Villa, who will start off as one of the biggest outsiders in Wembley history at 10-1 to lift the cup.

Just for context, fourth-tier Bradford were only 9-2 when they met Premier League side Swansea in the 2013 League Cup final while Watford were 13-2 before their whacking at Wembley.

Correct-score pops of 3-0 and 4-0 could be the ways to go, while Kevin De Bruyne's first goalscorer odds remain unaltered at 7-1 despite the Belgian being confirmed as City's new penalty-taker.
Prediction: Manchester City 3-0.

Key stats

• Man City have won their last four matches against Villa by an aggregate margin of 17-1.
• Aguero has scored nine goals against Villa at an average of one every 58 minutes but only once has he opened the scoring in the fixture
• Villa have lost ten and drawn one of their 11 meetings against teams who started the weekend in the top nine
• Both teams have scored in nine of Villa's last ten games

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